Prior to the advent of cable and satellite television, it was common for broadcast television to carry only a handful of analog television channels. With the wide deployment of cable and satellite television, it is now commonplace for a subscriber to have access to dozens of channels, even with only a basic service package. The present transition to digital television broadcast brings about additional excitement to consumers as hundreds of additional digital television channels become available. Some countries, such as Luxembourg and the Netherlands, have already completed their transition to digital broadcast television. Others are either in progress or are committed to the transition, including Brazil, China, Canada, Japan and the United States.
These available channels, when taken together with the hundreds or even thousands of additional television channels available via the Internet, provides the television consumer with a daunting task when trying to select a television channel for enjoyment. For example, it will take a consumer approximately 25 minutes to flip through 500 television channels even if each channel stays on for a mere 3 seconds. Even with the help of a program guide, or an electronic program guide (“EPG”), a consumer simply cannot easily keep track of what is on each of the numerous television channels, particularly when programming changes, overruns, delays or cancellations are involved.
This problem is even more profound for unscheduled television videos, such as are often made available dynamically via the Internet. In one example, an independent film maker releases a new movie about rising tennis star Ana Ivanovic. In another example, while vacationing in Japan, a tourist uploads a video clip of a magnitude 7.2 earthquake when it is happening. In yet another example, a freelance paparazzo reports breaking news with footage of celebrity Paris Hilton being stopped for a traffic violation. In another example, a high school orchestra director is offering the annual spring concert live online. In one more example, a proud parent just submits a funny video of her 2 year old child to an online competition.
In order to provide a personal viewing experience tailored to a consumer's interest, it is desirable to make sophisticated computing and dynamic decision making available on the consumer's side, namely at the television set. Furthermore, with the ever changing availability of numerous television videos, a computer scripting language that embodies the data and computing logic for selecting a television video is desirable in order to provide such a solution.